Apr
Doug Brown talks about Pacman Jones
Courtesy Winnipeg Free Press:
The Adam “Pacman” Jones story is one that every professional football player has been forced to contend with at one point or another during his career: the quandary of how to react to someone joining your football team who has had multiple transgressions with the law and who at the same time also happens to be supremely talented.
I don’t think anybody in the CFL has ever played alongside someone with the kind of rap sheet that “Pacman” has — he has been interviewed by the police in 10 separate incidents and has been arrested numerous times — but you get the point. Whether it’s Jones, former Alouette and Miami Dolphin Lawrence Phillips, or former Jacksonville Jaguar and Argonaut R.J. Soward, it’s always a case-by-case experiment as to how a team and its fans will respond to the addition of a player who brings more than just his bags with him, but the baggage of legal and public scrutiny.
As it stands right now, “Pacman” Jones, even though he is still serving an indefinite suspension with the NFL, is actively trying to orchestrate a trade between his former team, the Tennessee Titans, and the Dallas Cowboys. As was reported yesterday, the only thing holding up this trade is what the Cowboys are actually offering in exchange for his rights, as Jones was a No. 6-overall pick in the 2005 draft and the Cowboys initially offered nothing more than a seventh-rounder in exchange.
You would think that alongside the recognition of how much his stock has dropped in the NFL because of all the publicity surrounding the numerous fracases in which he has been involved, that players in the Cowboys organization would be less than thrilled about the prospect of him joining their team. Well, based on my 11 years in the game and experience of being a teammate to many a wayward soul, for the most part you would be wrong. In my experiences, the biggest problem assimilating a troubled athlete into a locker-room is the public relations nightmare that goes hand in hand with it. It does not always paint a franchise with the best brush to sign a career troublemaker and should the player continue to run afoul of the law, it tends to bring into question the judgment such an acquisition shows.
